rewards of relationship—approval, love, attention, and by the need
of the archetype to mate (Hera), to nurture (Demeter), or to be de-
pendent (Persephone as the Kore). For these women, fulfilling tradi-
tional women’s roles can be personally meaningful.
QUALITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS: LIKE DIFFUSELY RADIATING
LIGHT
Each of the three goddess categories has a characteristic quality
of consciousness. The quality associated with the vulnerable goddess
archetypes is “diffuse awareness.” Irene Claremont de Castillejo, a
Jungian analyst, described this awareness (in her book Knowing
Woman) as “an attitude of acceptance, an awareness of the unity of
all life, and a readiness for relationship.”^1 This quality of conscious-
ness typifies relationship-oriented people of both sexes.
I think of this kind of consciousness as analogous to light from a
living room lamp, which illuminates and casts a warm glow on
everything within its radius. It is a generalized attentiveness that
allows a person to notice feeling nuances, a receptivity to the emo-
tional tone in a situation, an awareness of the background sounds
as well as whatever is the center of attention in the foreground.
Diffuse awareness explains the scanning consciousness that allows
a parent to hear a child whimper through the din of conversation,
or that enables a wife to know that her husband is upset, feeling ill,
or under pressure when he walks in the door (sometimes even before
he may be aware of it himself). This receptive, diffuse kind of con-
sciousness can take in the whole or “gestalt” of a situation. (In con-
trast, the “focused consciousness” characteristic of Artemis, Athena,
and Hestia—the three virgin goddesses—concentrates on one ele-
ment to the exclusion of everything else.)
When I had two children barely out of diapers, I realized how
mothers’ behavior may be modified by their children to keep them
in a state of diffuse awareness. Most of the time when I was around
my children, I was attuned to them, in a receptive mental state in
which my mind was not focused. I
The Vulnerable Goddesses: Hera, Demeter, and Persephone